On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 11:56:51AM -0400, Justin Scott wrote:
> As a small player who operates a mail server used by many local
> businesses, this becomes a support issue for admins in our position. We
> operate an SMTP server of our own that the employees of these various
> companies use from work and at home. Everything works great until an
> ISP decides to block 25 outbound. Now our customer cannot reach our
> server, so they call us to complain that they can receive but not send
> e-mail. We, being somewhat intelligent, have a support process in place
> to walk the customer through the SMTP port change from 25 to one of our
> two alternate ports.
>
> The problem, however, is that the customer simply cannot understand why
> their e-mail worked one day and doesn't the next. In their eyes the
> system used to work, and now it doesn't, so that must mean that we broke
> it and that we don't know what we're doing.
I feel your pain, local compadre, but I'm on their side.
Here's your script:
"Allowing unfiltered public access to port 25 is one of the things that
increases everyone's spam load, and your ISP is trying to be a Good
Neighbor in blocking access to anyone's servers but their own; many ISPs
are moving towards this safer configuration. We're a good neighbor, as
well, and support Mail Submission Protocol on port 587, and here's how
you set it up -- and it will work from pretty much anywhere forever."
Which is a safe thing to tell people because it is decidedly *not* best
practice to block 587.
Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@xxxxxxxxxxx
Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
Those who cast the vote decide nothing.
Those who count the vote decide everything.
-- (Josef Stalin)